I have owned this lens for a few years now after getting it for a bargain £99 in a Jessops shop that was having a closing down sale. I use it mainly for landscape work and the odd indoor shot. The first thing I did was buy a lens cap with a pinch grip as the one supplied is hopeless with the lens hood attached.

This is an excellent lens. It is every bit as good as my Tokina 17, with a slightly faster aperture wide open. The Tokina has slightly truer colors to my thinking, but I am so pleased with this lens overall that I'm thinking of jettisoning the Tok -- and that is a big change, because the Tok is an excellent lens indeed.

This lens isn't as good as my Min35/2RS, but it is still a very good lens at 35/4.

I compared different sun flare, sensor glare and radiant lines from direct sun in a number of my lenses recently, and the coating on this lens works well in mitigating these issues. Far better than uncoated lenses.

I like Sigma's build, and the extra little details on the lens and in the padded cases. I've had no problem with compatibility at all.

The lens is about twice the size and weight of the Tok 17, with a very large filter size -- 77mm; but this, which once was a disadvantage (and these filters cost a lot) is now one of the standard Zeiss/Sony lens sizes, so the filters can be swapped around.

I still don't know if I'll keep the Tok and sell this, or sell the Tok and keep this Sigma. And that is just a measure of the true excellence of this lens, because when did you last encounter a zoom that can compete head-to-head with a prime? This can.

This was a good introduction to ultra-wide on full-frame for me. It's not a bad lens, and has visibly less distortion and less CA than the 28-135mm @ 28mm. However, seems to have a yellow cast, especially in low light, and I find it difficult to improve the colours in pp.

I realised I was always using it at 17mm so I sold it and bought the Sony 20/2.8 instead.

At first I was hesitant about this lens due to sigma's reputation, but after owning the 105mm macro lens I thought I'd give it a shot, my only other option for Alpha 850 was the 12-24mm which was ALOT more expensive - I'm glad I did however.

Let me impress the sheer novelty of shooting at 17mm, it's VERY WIDE; although it's nice to have F2.8 for those times when you probably just want a "party shot", you'l probably shoot around F5 to minimise all vignette and bring centre detail up to excellent, and improve corners.

Corner sharpness at 17mm may not be that great until smaller apertures, but we're talking far corners on a full frame - it's not usually a problem. The true pay-off of this lens is that 17mm is unsuitable for most close-up portraits, however 35mm straightens out nicely. I didn't rate the lens down for the distortion at 17mm, it's a side-effect of fitting such a large field of view exaggerating depth - which works great for indoor architecture shots. Other distortions are very well controlled, and there are barely signs of chromatic aberration

Colours seem neutral, it has good contrast, maybe returns slightly warm colours but it could just be the camera's AWB - in any event when shooting in raw all colour detail and contrast is there.

I haven't used this lens in enough similar conditions to compare it thoroughly, but it definitely has better CA control and detail than the 18-70mm I used on my A200. Bokeh seems to be nice, possibly better towards the long end, but I'll update my review with experience.

All in all - I would recommend this lens for somebody wanting a versatile wide angle for full-frame that won't cost the world.

The worst thing is its cap. When hood is on, one cannot remove the cap easily. I am going to buy another cap.

Filter thread 77mm.

f2.8 ONLY at 17mm.

Not sharp in the corners up to f/5.6. (Sigma's own MTF of this lens seems to be correct).

Film camera Maxxum 7 does not always operate AF - happens after I install the lens with "too careful" action, slowly.

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200USD seemed to be a good deal and it was so indead. Happy. I heard of Sigma variations in quality, so it seems I was lucky.

According to tests found on the Web this lens has better distortion @17mm than Nikon or Tamron and compares to Canon(L) 17-35/2.8.
As I can see barrel distortion @17mm is very small, at least when used on a cropped camera.

Colors are very good, they are just not like 50/1.4 which I like. I'm not good at judging colors though.

Made a test shot with a sun in the corner. No flare, contrast is good. Surprised.

i bash my gear around. this lens is high quality enough. rocks on the a700.

i got this lens after reading these (few) reviews. i use it daily and have -no- regrets. the picky people eaters will say they wish this was f3.5 at 35mm, but i don't. i also got a f3.5@35 35-105mm to compliment it.

Flare is controlled, but the shallow hood limits angle to the sun
Does not have a distance window like the old Minolta lenses

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Excellent wide to normal zoom for the money. Typical Sigma EX build (solid) with the hood and nice case included. Colors are very close to the old Minolta colors with excellent contrast. The images are very sharp, and print well. This is a good companion for your daily kit, especially for city and nature (landscapes) shots.

I like this lens, I wasn't sure if I would but I wanted something just a little wider than my Sigma 24-70 2.8 EX DG and this came up. I need the extra width because some of my work entails taking pictures in confined spaces but where fisheyes wouldn't be acceptable.
The 17-35 range equates to 25-52 in 35mm terms which means it covers what used to be considered the two best prime lengths (28 and 50) for 'normal' use.
Its very sharp when stopped down beyond 5.6 and more than acceptable from f4. Sharpness is much better than the kit especially at the widest end and if it softens up a little towards 35mm its not really a problem because of the overlap with the 24-70.
Colour is really nice and vivid - maybe a little too much at times but that is easier to adjust in PP than flat washed out colour.
I'm really looking forward to trying this out on some landscape work.
Overall this is a good piece of glass that will always be in my bag and which I expect will spend a lot of time on my camera. I will be giving it a run out as well on one of my film bodies just to satisfy my curiousity since I've never actually used a lens wider than 28mm in full frame.
Sigma's EX DG range has some very nice lenses and should do a lot to dispel the bad name that Sigma seems to have collected.

First of all I was surprised the Minolta/Pentax version of this lens — just like Sigma 10-20 — is built quite differently than the USM versions.

The focus ring does turn on autofocus and on manual I found its action a bit loose on my copy, if still useable enough. The front element doesn't turn, neither on focus nor zooming, and accepts a petal shade — not really sufficient but still necessary, for flaring CAN indeed be a problem with lateral light.

The lens is well built, looks and feels solid. Autofocus is very fast and quite precise on my D5. There's noticeable but acceptable barrel distortion at 17mm, that turns almost flat by 35mm. Luminosity decreases quite steeply with zooming: 17mm/2.8 - 18mm/3.2 - 23mm/3.5 - 28mm/4. It seems to me its colors turn just a bit warmer than natural, perhaps with some yellow cast, but no real concern. Sharpness and contrast are its weak points; wide open at any lenght it is soft indeed; it's markedly better from f/5.6 up but never gets to be really, 3D sharp. Interestingly it seems sharper the shorter it's set. Images respond quite well to post processing though.